Recently, in the field of silver halide photographic materials, requirements for images of further high quality have been increased along with spread of color photographic materials. In such a situation, studies of color reproduction, stability, enhancement of sharpness, glossiness and the like have been made more broadly than ever in silver halide photographic materials used for color prints, so-called color paper.
There are generally known irradiation and halation as a factor affecting sharpness. The former is brought about by incident light scattered by silver halide grains or oil droplets of a coupler or the like, dispersed in gelatin film, the extent of which is mainly dependent of gelatin content, silver halide content and oil droplet content; the latter is dependent of the extent of light reflection from the support, depending on reflectance or refractive index of the support.
There are known methods of providing, an antihalation layer to prevent halation. Improvements thereof are described, for example, in JP-A Nos. 55-33172, 59-193447, 59-151650 and 62-33448 (hereinafter, the term, JP-A refers to Japanese Patent Application Publication). However, these methods cause a marked lowering in sensitivity along with enhanced sharpness so that it was difficult to achieve enhanced sharpness with maintaining practically sufficient sensitivity by only such a means.
There have been studied improvements of supports. Recently, for the purpose of shortening the processing time, a water-resistant support in which the substrate paper surface is laminated with polyolefin resin or the like, and so-called RC paper has been used as a support for color print photographic material, in which to enhance sharpness and whiteness, white pigments such as titanium oxide are dispersed in the polyolefin resin layer on the emulsion layer side of the support. To enhance sharpness, as disclosed in JP-A Nos. 54-46035, 64-18144 and 2-71256, it was effective to combine a technique of using RC paper in which a white pigment was filled at a much more amount in the polyolefin resin layer of the emulsion-coated side. However, there were disadvantages such as a lowering of smoothness of the polyethylene layer surface and deteriorated adhesion between the polyethylene layer and the emulsion layer.
Apparent glossiness is related to “image clarity” the measurement of which is defined in JIS K 7105 and JIS H8686 and photographic prints exhibiting high image clarity are strongly desired. Low image clarity results in a quality deficient in high-grade feel. On the contrary, high image clarity in the case of color paper can obtain prints with glossy feeling, which is liked by general users. However, strong gloss due to light reflection often makes it difficult to observe printed images. Further, because of a high smoothness, for example, adhesion of fingerprints becomes easy in the course of preparing prints or when people observe photographic prints with taking them in hands, resulting in eventual deteriorated quality.
Silver halide photographic materials are treated under various environments and requirements for storage stability or physical properties of photographic prints have increased. For example, there was a problem that when some pressure is continuously applied streakily onto the surface of color paper during the course of handling and after the color paper is processed, streaky pressure marks are produced only on the pressure-applied portion, and it remains a strong desire to overcome such problems.
There was also proposed a method in which a hydrophilic colloid layer containing a white pigment is provided between the support of a silver halide photographic material and a silver halide emulsion layer to improve rapid processability, sharpness, sensitivity stability and dye forming ability (as described, for example, in patent documents 1 to 4).
However, any one of the proposed methods described above is mainly directed toward improvement of sharpness or improvement of process stability under an environment of rapid access and nothing is taught or suggested with respect to the foregoing problems, such as image clarity, storage stability and pressure resistance.
Patent document 1:                JP-A No. 6-35149 (scope of patent claims)        
Patent document 2:                JP-A No. 7-134358 (scope of patent claims)        
Patent document 3:                JP-A No. 8-272041 (scope of patent claims)        
Patent document 4:                JP-A No. 8-304960 (scope of patent claims)        